FARMING THE CITY

Can S.F.'s vacant lots become garden plots?

Matthew Green, Special to The Chronicle

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, March 22, 2008

Photo: Darryl Bush

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Kevin Bayuk of the group "Daily Acts," eats fruit from a fuchsia splendens plant he he grew in a shared garden, that he makes compost in and grows many plants for sustainable living of the backyard where he rents an apartment in San Francisco, CA, on Friday, November, 24, 2006. 11/24/06
Darryl Bush / The Chronicle ** Kevin Bayuk (cq) less

green_tours_085_db.JPG
Kevin Bayuk of the group "Daily Acts," eats fruit from a fuchsia splendens plant he he grew in a shared garden, that he makes compost in and grows many plants for sustainable living of ... more

Photo: Darryl Bush

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Kevin Bayuk of the group "Daily Acts," looks for various herbs and plants in a shared garden, that he makes compost in and grows many plants for sustainable living of the backyard where he rents an apartment in San Francisco, CA, on Friday, November, 24, 2006. 11/24/06
Darryl Bush / The Chronicle ** Kevin Bayuk (cq) less

green_tours_079_db.JPG
Kevin Bayuk of the group "Daily Acts," looks for various herbs and plants in a shared garden, that he makes compost in and grows many plants for sustainable living of the backyard where ... more

Photo: Darryl Bush

FARMING THE CITY

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If San Francisco resident Kevin Bayuk has his way, every unused plot of land in this densely packed city, from narrow, shaded alleys to concrete-laden yards, will be transformed into organic-food-producing gardens.

Bayuk and other urban gardeners with big dreams but little capital are striving to create a metropolis that can feed itself.

It's one thing to support local organic agriculture, as in the region's farms that sell their goods at farmers' markets. But for Bayuk, a 30-year-old landscaper and gardener who lives in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, a truly local food system means being able to walk down the block from your house to harvest a bowl of salad greens for dinner.

Over the past year, as a project for the San Francisco Permaculture Guild, a group of gardening and design professionals, educators, activists and volunteers, Bayuk has been on the hunt for open space in San Francisco.

Bayuk and the guild envision what amounts to a reincarnation of tenant farming, in which gardens are built and tended in private vacant lots by volunteer growers. Unlike tenant farming, however, landowners would not be paid, and the produce would go to local food banks and possibly even be sold at farmers' markets.

Most owners intend to develop these lots, but the permit process often takes years, and during that time the land sits fallow and sometimes blights the neighborhood. Some owners don't live in the city and are unaware of the state of their properties. That's the perfect time, Bayuk says, to install a temporary organic garden. If the lot has exposed earth, he says, the soil would be tested, and if it's not contaminated, seeds and starts could be planted directly in the ground. If the lot is paved, container gardens or beds could be installed.

Bayuk recently compiled a surprisingly large list of privately owned vacant sites - called infill lots - throughout the city. The 1,058 lots amount to about 127 acres, or 5.5 million square feet, a fairly significant amount of unused land for a city that measures 49 square miles, or roughly 31,300 acres.

The San Francisco office of the assessor-recorder conducted its own search in its database and, surprisingly, found more than double the number of lots Bayuk had found (see box).

"I was shocked by how many (vacant) properties there are and the sizes of them," Bayuk said "While these plots are vacant - and before they're developed - there's a great opportunity to use them for gardening."

Bayuk plans to send the property owners on his list letters asking permission for free, temporary use of their land. In exchange, gardeners will assume all risk, releasing the owners from liability. Bayuk also said soil testing and remediation would be done on a case-by-case basis depending on what the lot had been used for, whether toxins are suspected and whether weeds are substantial. He notes that, in other parts of the country, universities have donated soil testing services.

Landowners wouldn't be charged and, at the very least, the project would take care of weed abatement, a costly procedure that property owners often have to pay for anyway, he said.

Bayuk's appeal stresses the idea that a garden beautifies a property and could increase both its value and the value of neighboring properties. Furthermore, Bayuk makes clear that the garden would be transitory and guarantees its removal upon request, with as little as 10 days' notice.

"I have no idea what the response will be," he said, acknowledging that some property owners, still concerned about liability issues, will decide to keep the land empty. But he hopes others will view the invitation as a mutually beneficial arrangement: "I can't imagine the downside for the property owner," he said.

Hard sell

But such a proposition might be a hard sell.

"Unless my client was disposed toward gardening, I don't see that they would particularly care to do that," said J.J. Panzer, a property manager and broker with Real Management Co. in San Francisco. "The way that I would see it would be, first of all, there really isn't a whole lot of benefit and an awful lot of liability of having random, unauthorized people on your property. As a professional, I would definitely recommend against it."

Panzer argues that a release of liability doesn't stop someone from suing the owner because individuals may not be covered even if general permission is given.

"I can see that some landlords might say, 'Hey, beautify the property - enhance the value of land next door,' " Panzer said. "My opinion would still be if you have a vacant lot, keep it vacant. If you want to start a garden, do it yourself."

There is also the issue of where the water for the garden will come from and other hidden costs.

Bayuk says he understands potential obstacles and hopes to present owners with a range of options. Liability concerns would be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

"As I understand it, in some cases where the owner is intending to develop the property with structures at some point and they already have homeowner's insurance, then they are likely covered by their policy for personal liability," Bayuk said. Other options include a "hold harmless" clause, standard in community-garden lease agreements, or the creation of a garden club that can purchase liability insurance policies.

Regarding water, Bayuk said if the property has a meter, the Public Utilities Commission has established a precedent for subsidizing irrigation at some community gardens, or a payment arrangement can be made with the property owner.

Failing that, "the site can still be used productively through an intelligent drought-tolerant perennial plant selection. With the appropriate amount of mulch applied in harmony with rains, many useful, low-maintenance, productive plants can be effectively established and will thrive," he said.

Factory farming

Bayuk argues that the need to produce food locally is just as imperative now as it was during World War II, when nearly 20 million Americans countered food rationing by cultivating Victory Gardens on rooftops and in backyards, and in some cases on public land, including portions of Golden Gate Park.

A modern-day victory garden campaign in San Francisco, independent of Bayuk's project, was spearheaded last year by a group of local artists and activists. This incarnation offers training and materials to city residents in an effort to turn as many backyards as possible into productive growing areas. (For more information, www.sfvictorygardens.org.)

Nationally, interest in buying local foods has skyrocketed: From 1994 to 2006, there was a nearly 150 percent increase in the number of farmers' markets (up to more than 4,300), according to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Bayuk sees this trend as a direct alternative to what he views as the extreme environmental and health costs of industrial agriculture. Vast amounts of water, fossil fuels and pesticides are used by industrial farms to produce food and ship it to distant markets, not to mention the produce that spoils in transport. The average American meal travels about 1,500 miles from farm to plate, according to the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture in San Francisco.

"If we grow food right where we're at," Bayuk said, "wherever we can, it will have an immense ripple effect. I can't imagine why we're not doing it."

Next week: Meet the guerrilla gardeners who don't ask permission to plant. The soil is there to be used, they say, whether property owners like it or not.

Foot by foot

Kevin Bayuk came up with his figures for how many vacant lots are in San Francisco by searching a UC Berkeley Geographic Information Systems database that locates privately owned vacant lots throughout urban areas in California. The addresses were then cross-referenced with the San Francisco County assessor-recorder's Web site to locate the addresses of the property owners.

Bayuk assumed that some of the data were outdated or inaccurate and might not always account for high-use areas like parking lots. When the San Francisco office of the assessor-recorder was questioned for this article about the accuracy of Bayuk's list, it conducted its own search in a private, continuously updated database. Surprisingly, the office found more than double the number of lots Bayuk found.

In addition to the 2,944 vacant private parcels (not including parking lots), the database also located 2,090 vacant city-owned lots, totaling more than 5,000 empty pieces of land in the city, according to Katie Muehlenkamp, an aide to Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting.

Bayuk said the discrepancy between his figures and the assessors' might be because of a different interpretation of "vacant." Bayuk counted only property with nothing built on it.

New culture

Permaculture is short for "permanent agriculture," a term coined in the 1970s by Australian Bill Mollison. It's defined as a design system for meeting human needs derived from patterns observed in natural systems.

-- The Urban Permaculture Guild is an educational nonprofit with offices in Oakland and Big Sur. www.urbanpermacultureguild.org.